Who Should Administer the Ordinances?

Pastor, meet Bob. Earlier this year, Bob was converted and baptized at a campus-wide evangelistic event and is ready to get involved at your church. After talking with him to discern his conversion, you might have more than a few questions about how his baptism went down. After all, the city where he was baptized is filled with local churches.

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper happen in lots of places: on university campuses, in homes, among small groups, at weddings. And yet, few Christians stop to ask who the ordinances belong to, let alone who should be the ones administering them.

Whose Are They?

We must begin by seeing that both baptism and the Lord’s Supper were given by Jesus to the local church, not to individual Christians or even good parachurch ministries.

To local churches belong the keys of the kingdom—which is their Jesus-given authority to make judgments on Jesus’s behalf. Through baptism, a local church speaks for Jesus to the world by saying, “This person belongs to Jesus and, therefore, they are with us” (Matt. 16:19; 18:18). Similarly, through the Lord’s Supper, local churches use their Jesus-given authority to renew and unite their members to one another and ultimately to Jesus himself (1 Cor. 10:17; 11:17–20, 33–34). Jesus didn’t give the authority to baptize or partake of the Supper to parachurches or individuals (save the apostles). By implication, parachurches and individuals should normally leave baptism and the Lord’s Supper to the local church. In fact, parachurches do best when they see themselves as support to the local church and never as competition.

When thinking about this topic, I sought feedback from a number of pastors and ministry leaders from Africa to the Middle East to the Far East. The overwhelming response from these brothers was that it would be unthinkable to practice the ordinances outside the local church. In fact, the only people they had ever witnessed administering the ordinances outside of a church context were Western missionaries.

Who Administers Them?

Given that baptism and the Lord’s Supper belong to the church, we must ask who in the church should (normally) lead the administration of these ordinances. Certainly, there are exceptions to the rule, but generally, elders should administer these two rites.

To be fair, the Bible doesn’t directly say elders should administer the ordinances. The lack of an imperative makes elder-led ordinances a matter of wisdom. And yet, you would be hard-pressed to argue that the apostle Paul, who was deeply concerned that the church worshiped in an orderly fashion (1 Cor. 14:26–40; 1 Tim. 2:8–15), would have taken a laissez-faire approach to the church’s only two ordinances! Just as your church (hopefully) does not allow just anyone to preach the Word, so also should your church think carefully about who administers the ordinances.

Jesus has instituted two offices of the church: elders and deacons (1 Tim. 3:1–13). While deacons serve and work for the church’s unity, elders must be “able to teach” and “give instruction in sound doctrine” (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:9). These men are set aside by the church to teach, shepherd, oversee, and guard the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made them overseers (1 Pet. 5:2; Acts 20:28). Teaching and oversight extend to the church’s practice of the ordinances because the ordinances visibly portray the gospel. The ordinances teach. Therefore, it’s not a stretch to deduce that when the church gathers, the one who teaches (i.e., the elders) should normally be the one to administer the ordinances. When Paul rebuked the Corinthian congregation for their divisive and even drunken participation in the Lord’s Supper, it was a failure of the church as a whole. But it was certainly first a failure of the elders whose job it was to teach and guard.

As a pastor who has lived overseas for over twelve years, I have had to renew my passport several times. What if I was walking down the street in my neighborhood and asked a random American to renew my passport? Would he be able to help me? Of course not. He doesn’t have the authority to carry out an official act of the United States. The Americans who did renew my passports did so not in their capacity as individual Americans but by virtue of their official capacity. They were authorized to give me a new passport by the United States government.

Like passport officials with their government, elders have been recognized by their congregations as those with authority to teach. So elders should also be those who normally teach through and oversee the ordinances. Certainly, there are exceptions to the rule. For instance, non-elders may baptize in a pioneer missions setting. Similarly, churches without elders should not abstain from the ordinances. Rather, those most mature and able to carefully handle the ordinances should administer them to God’s people even while the church prays that God would provide elders soon. These exceptions don’t undermine the wisdom of having elders be the ones to administer the ordinances.

Why Does It Matter?

The ordinances are a crucial part of what makes a church a church. When rightly understood, they present to the eye and the mouth a sensible gospel—a gospel that can be felt, seen, and tasted. The ordinances also bind the members of the church together and so showcase the unity that belonging to Jesus affords them.

For churches to understand just how important the ordinances are, and so enjoy their benefits, they need to be taught. Similarly, right teaching defends churches against faith-threatening misunderstandings of the ordinances that have plagued the church since its inception. Who will teach? Normally, the elders.